Discussioni categoria:Testi in romancio

Merging the Romansh Wikisource(s)

Sorry for writing in English, but I don't speak any Italian (je peux aussi écrire en français si c'est mieux pour vous).

I wanted to take the proposal made in 2015 on the Romansh Wikipedia "Pinta" back up. Back then, Utente:Mizardellorsa informed the Romansh community about this project here. I made the suggestion that instead of having a separate Romansh Wikisource, we should create a new namespace on the Romansh Wikipedia where texts can be saved. This is what was done on the Alemannic Wikipedia, where we have the namespace "Text" for Wikisource texts, "Wort" for Wiktionary words, "Buech" for Wikibooks, etc. I think that for smaller language editions, this is a good solution, since there are usually not very many active users and everything can be maintained and patrolled in one place. It also makes it easier to link to pages, and then we could maybe feature Romansh texts on the "Pagina principala". Right now, there is this test Wikisource here, then there is the Category:Rumantsch, and on the Romansh Wikipedia there are also a few "articles" that really should be in a Wikisource page. Having content in three places isn't ideal.

What we would have to do is hold a vote in the "Pinta" to create a new namespace for texts, then request them, and then of course move the pages.

In 2015, nobody from the Romansh community reacted, so Mizardellorsa's request for input went nowhere, but maybe we could try again? What do you think @Mizardellorsa, @Kazu89? Who else is involved in this test project who might want to comment? --Terfili (disc.) 11:37, 27 lug 2017 (CEST)

@Terfili Scusa se ti rispondo in Italiano. Ti comunico, innanzitutto, che il progetto per la lingua ladina è andato avanti e c'è la collaborazione del prof. Videsott, che è il direttore della sezione ladina dell'Università di Bolzano/Bressanone che ci ha autorizzato all'uso delle trascrizioni curate dal suo istituto. Tra l'altro il prof Videsott è tra i massimi conoscitori della linguistica non solo ladina, ma anche romancia, come dall'opera http://bupress.unibz.it/it/ratoromanische-bibliographie-bibliografia-retoromanza-1729-2010.html. Buone notizie ci sono anche sulla partecipazione ad un bando Interreg Italia-Svizzera con un progetto Lingualp che riguarda gli itinerari turistici ispirati alle leggende e ai testi letterari in ladino e in romancio. Ma anche se non si dovesse vincere il bando, si potrebbe ugualmente percorrere un cammino insieme e completare la raccolta dei testi. Decidete pure su Pinta dove caricare i testi: cercherò di darvi comunque una mano.-Mizar (ζ Ursae Maioris) (disc.) 14:17, 27 lug 2017 (CEST)

Thanks for the quick response @Mizardellorsa! I can understand most of what you wrote and Google Translate helped with the rest :) Ok, so since you agree with this idea, I will start a discussion and vote on the "Pinta" and hopefully this time there will be more participation from Romansh users.

By the way, just to be clear: my proposal only concerns the texts written in the Romansh varieties of Switzerland. I'm not sure if it is useful to store texts in the Ladin of Italy in rm.wikipedia. But if this works well for Romansh, maybe once the Ladin Wikipedia gets started, they can copy this approach. --Terfili (disc.) 15:04, 27 lug 2017 (CEST)

C'è però un problema per i testi in formato .djvu ad esempio https://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Indice:Decurtins_-_R%C3%A4toromanische_chrestomathie,_I.djvu. In Alemanno, ad esempio, c'è un sistema diverso. Proviamo a chiedere agli esperti. L'importante è arrivare ad un sistema unico.Mizar (ζ Ursae Maioris) (disc.) 16:04, 27 lug 2017 (CEST)

Yes, that is true, there is some technical infrastructure that would have to be set up on rm.wikipedia. I don't know anything about that, but I'm sure we could find an expert to help. --Terfili (disc.) 17:07, 27 lug 2017 (CEST)

Hi Terfili, the tech that you need is the ProofreadPage extension. I see that als.pedia does not have it; rm.pedia will need it if you plan to transfer the texts as they are. (And for a better text quality, I suggest you use it). This extension has probably never been installed on a Wikipedia before, but it should work just as it works on Wikisource. For the installation you will have to request it on phabricator, I can help with that if you want. And of course we at it.source can help you with moving the texts and setting the necessary configuration. Let us know what will be decided on Pinta. Can da Lua (disc.) 17:36, 27 lug 2017 (CEST)

Hi Can da Lua, that sounds wonderful that you are willing to help with the technical side! I think if the Romansh community decides to integrate Wikisource, we will definitely want to enable that extension. I will start the discussion on the Pinta soon, even though a decision will probably not happen very quickly, since most users are only sporadically active. --Terfili (disc.) 20:25, 27 lug 2017 (CEST)

@Alexmar983 Pingo anche Alexmar, che in passato si è occupato delle lingue minori, nella speranza che nasca una iniziativa unitaria appunto per le varie lingue. A livello Alpi segnalo che in questo momento è molto vitale Olwikisource in piemontese-Mizar (ζ Ursae Maioris) (disc.) 06:02, 28 lug 2017 (CEST)

My proposal was and still is to create a user group for minor languages that coordinates effort in WMF and related platform for a rational design of platform architectures merging along multilingual axes or along different platforms in an organic way. At least for European minor languages that are clearly a koinè. At the moment minor languages are under big pressure from "main languages" in what concerns too many aspect, from interaction with wikidata to technical expertise, but in practice they need to create a model on their own. Can we create an user group to finally discuss this topi in a centralized way and agree on some point with some critical mass?--Alexmar983 (disc.) 06:45, 28 lug 2017 (CEST)

Utente:Terfili so an user group on European minor languages... we can ask funding forestablishing a a boot camp or a conference in Europe to decide what to do and where to go, increase effort on multilingual platform such as commons and wikidata about very specific label, study how the new structured commons can also host minor document in our languages, create a newsletter about topic that present the vitality of users interested in minor languages on wikiplatform... and be a model for future minor langauges in the world...--Alexmar983 (disc.) 06:49, 28 lug 2017 (CEST)

That sounds like a great idea. I think it would also be useful as a way to share experiences and solutions to the problems more unique to minor language editions. --Terfili (disc.) 10:08, 28 lug 2017 (CEST)

Hi all I have just been in Celtic Knot Conference with other minor languages (Gaelic, Cornish, Basque, Catalan, Sami, etc.) where this user group have been (basically) created but not like a user group but like a council of chapters and of existing user groups. I personally was informed of it in Wikimedia Conference in Berlin during a session dedicated to the minor languages and proposed to participate to explain what Wikimedia CH is doing. In addition Wikimedia CH is in contact with all Western chapters (Portugal, Spain, Catalunya, UK, Italy and France and with the user group of Euskadi) to formalize this council. The problem, evident in this conference of Edimburgh, is that these languages are too small to speed up the local communities (at least this is what has been reported by the representatives of these languages) and for this reason they operate under the umbrella of a chapter. An example is Wikimedia UK who has some wikipedians in residence working with universities to improve the content of small languages. Honestly I would say that this action is working well, but behind it there is a big chapter paying someone that is helping the local community to grow. Personally I have seen some unsuccess with bottom up initiatives of aggregation of small languages in the past. Probably you don't know but in South America it has been tried the creation of a user group of indigenous languages but now this group is pretty dormient. I would invite you to join to this council, instead, if you like. With Spain and Portugal there is the plan to have a meeting in Porto on the 2018. --Ilario (disc.) 18:26, 28 lug 2017 (CEST)

@Ilario Convolgo nella tematica anche Ilario-Mizar (ζ Ursae Maioris) (disc.) 17:12, 28 lug 2017 (CEST)

Hi all, the decision to have the texts in the Italian Wikisource is connected with some mandatory points we have with the University of Bozen and with some other partners in this projects ("Digital Library in Rhaeto-Romansh"). Now I can explain the content of the agreement because it has been signed by both parties (Wikimedia CH and University of Bozen) and it can be made public. The first point is to give to the texts the maximum accessibility and to have an easy way to generate them like e-books. As you know the Italian Wikisource is directly connected with MLOL, it means that the majority of libraries in Italy and in Switzerland (using this service) automatically will have the e-books of this digital library in Rumantsch and in Ladin available to all users of the libraries for free. We are in contact with all libraries of Bozen and Trento to inform them that they will have the digital library available sooner. The second point is conencted with the feedback we have received from the schools of Bozen and of Grisons. They would have an offline version of this digital library to be used at the school and they agree to have additional books (in Italian or in German). The local administration of Bozen reported us that they don't have any digital book in Rhaeto-Romansh (the books of the University of Bozen are not accessible and the old project of digitization of the Crestomazia Rumantscha is pretty died). I have contacted the group of Kiwix to generate some specific ZIM files. One having only Rhaeto-Romansh books, another including also Italian books and another including also German books. Having the books in Wikipedia, and not in Wikisource, will create more problem to generate these ZIM files. A final point is that this library is in Rhaeto-Romansh (so including also Ladin languages). In the past, internally to Wikimedia CH, the decision was to help the Rhaeto-Romansh with projects like Wikisource and Wikitionary instead of Wikipedia and, speaking also with the University of Bozen, they supported this approach because the biggest value of Rhaeto-Romansh is filological. We discovered that the University is following basically our approach: creation of a big library in Rhaeto-Romansh, extraction of words from this library to build a big dictionary in Rhaeto-Romansh and finally working with Rhaeto-Romansh content may be in Wikipedia. That's all about the history of this project. I hope that it will clarify about our decisions. --Ilario (disc.) 18:26, 28 lug 2017 (CEST)

I think it is important for the Romansh-Wiki community to be consolidated, rather than splintered. At the Romansh Wikipedia, there is a steady creation of good articles (several per month usually) by users that I suspect probably have something to do with the Lia Rumantscha or a similar group. They can easily be spotted by several traits: empty userpage, e-mail function not activated, main activity is publishing a high-quality translation in one single edit, no interaction with other users or responses to comments. Meanwhile, there are also two Romansh-Wikisource projects, one larger one here and one smaller but more organized one on the multilingual Wikisource, and nobody is working together. Then, once a year or so, a new Romansh user will become active, write a few articles, then gradually stop, probably because it just isn’t fun to contribute to a project where there is no interaction with others. By having content in three different places, the growth and consolidation of a true Romansh Wiki community is being hindered.

I actually tried just now to put myself in the shoes of a Romansh speaker looking for this page, and it didn’t show up in any search results no matter what I typed in (contrary to the multilingual Wikisource page, which did come up). It is a bit better if I search for a specific author, like Peider Lansel, but even then I have to scroll down quite a bit in the search results. A Romansh speaker isn’t going to find this great content here very easily, but if it was all in one place, it would be easier to transclude and feature the Wikisource pages, so that it can actually be of use of Romansh speakers. Right now the accessibility to the average Romansh speaker is pretty limited.

If the problem is of a technical nature, that this or that function isn’t going to work on the Romansh Wikipedia at the moment, I think that is something that can be set up very easily by one of the people at the Phabricator. That really shouldn't be an obstacle.

I’m a bit confused about your comment that the biggest value of Romansh is philological. I think the tens of thousands of people who use Romansh in daily life might have a different opinion about that. By the way there are now a number of online Romansh dictionaries available (mesPledaris, Pledari Grond, Dicziunari Puter, Dicziunari Vallader, Niev vocabulari romontsch sursilvan). Before resources are put into a Romansh Wiktionary, it would be good to think about what a Wiktionary would add to this selection.

Whether consolidating this content in one place like as a separate namespace on Wikipedia is best, or if there is another solution to make it organized and accessible to Romansh speakers, that is what I would like to see a discussion about with the inclusion of the Romansh-speaking users. --Terfili (disc.) 11:27, 30 lug 2017 (CEST)

Quando si è cominciato a prospettare una collaborazione con l'Università di Bolzano/Bressanone sulle letterature retoromanze, per quello che riguarda il romancio la mia principale preoccupazione è stata due anni fa, quella di avere il supporto di una comunità wikisourciana per il lavoro impegnativo dei testi in djvu e infatti utente:Alex Brollo si è sobbarcato l'impegnativo compito di caricare l'immensa opera del Decurtins. Capisco, però anche l'esigenza di Terfili di rendere facilmente accessibili i testi senza disperderli tra tre posti. Al bar di wikisource c'è una proposta proprio di Alex Brollo. Ma se non va bene, se ne trova un'altra: con un poco di buona volontà una soluzione al problema la si trova. La comunità dei wikisourciani ha detto che darà tutto il suo aiuto tecnico. Mizar (ζ Ursae Maioris) (disc.) 19:43, 30 lug 2017 (CEST)

I understand your goal and I may agree about consolidation, but at the same time I am asking also to understand our own and our effort to support the Rhaeto-Romansh projects differently. Your proposal is to aggregate everthing in a Wikipedia project and not to migrate from one Wikisource to another. I am figuring out how this can happen, but everything seems to don't be beneficial for the project of the creation of the digital library in Rhaeto-Romansh. Probably I miss something on this proposal, because the proposal asks to transform a Wikisource content in Wikipedia articles whitout giving concrete and verifiable advantages but only techncial problems that (may be) can be resolved opening tickets in Phabricator (?). A little bit foggy proposal IMHO.

If your goal is to increase the participation of people in rm.wikipedia.org, the association Wikimedia CH would be very happy to help and to contact entities which can help, but having a more sustainable and efficient project than the proposal to aggregate content of two different projects, which may be disruptive for both. These are two projects with different aims and rules, even if considering the goal of Wikipedia (which is not a primary source) and of Wikisource (which is a primary source).

About technical problems I would say that what you are speaking about is something that cannot be fixed with Phabricator. The integration of MLOL is done by an external entity and the same is valid for Kiwix. So when you are saying: "I think that is something that can be set up very easily by one of the people at the Phabricator" I will reply that these two technical questions have not involvement of the tech community and the pahcricator tickets cannot solve them.

About the confusion of the phylological aspects, I can understand, but the same concerns are not present when we speak with researchers of Rhaeto-Romansh (like the University of Bozen). They work mainly in phylological aspects and Wikisource is the best project to host this kind of projects. This will stress more my concern about your proposal to move in Wikipedia a project which has phylological goals. The same proposal to split the library hosting in rm.wikipedia.org the section of Romansh and to keep in it.wikisource the section of Ladin texts is an indication that the phylological goal is not clear. Here we can also report the same goal to aggregate the similarities, so to have the old romansh texts together with the ladin texts in order to help researchers to work better and to don't manage different places.

The question about Wiktionary is related to the new project of integration of the Wiktionary on Wikidata. This may open a lot of possibilities for the Rhaeto-Romansh when considering words like entries of Wikidata. In this case projects like Pledari will be obsolete sooner and there will be the opportunity to work more looking at the wiktionary like a repository which is open to the reaserchers and can be integrated easily.

I think that there are solutions that can satisfy both needs (i.e. a replication of content), but Wikisource is the right place for sources and for literary texts. --Ilario (disc.) 14:21, 2 ago 2017 (CEST)

@Ilario I was not informed about MLOL and Kiwix integration. I don't understand what is exactly the problem for them of reading from Wikipedia instead of Wikisource, since the software is basically the same; however I will trust your word on that. Anyway, I think the main reason for using a Wikipedia instead of a Wikisource is this: it's nearly impossibile to get a Rumansh Wikisource. If we could get it created, it would surely be the best solution. Even without native speakers, we could build a viable project just by gathering all the texts (and the users) which are now scattered in other places. But someone should convince the Language Committee about creating the project... do you want to try to explore this road? Can da Lua (disc.) 17:16, 2 ago 2017 (CEST)

@Candalua Yes. exactly, this was at the start the aim: the creation of a rumantsch Wikisource, and I get in touch also with the Langcom committee, but in my opinion the community is too weak to mantain another project. The goal is to try to build a community around a section of it.wikisource and to open another wikisource when this community is built. This seems to me the most reasonable way because a smaller community can be incubate by a bigger one and can learn. This is not possible with Wikipedia, but this is possible with Wikisource! Having the texts in the Rumantsch Wikipedia basically will add content but not community. The solution seems to me to choke the best results we are having now with the texts. MLOL and Kiwix can extract from another project by sure, the problems I am reporting are not "blocking" problems but adding all the technical issues will generate an additional manpower that doesn't make sense in my opinion. MLOL and Kiwix have to give manpower to correct their connections. At the moment, as I said, I think that to incubate the Rhaeto-Romansh library inside Italian Wikisource makes more sense. This is what I discussed with the Langcom too and this is what we are trying to do. Along with the Rhaeto-Romansh library, additional results are following like the involvement of the schools and of the local administration. To involve bigger entities like "Lia Rumantscha" it's not sufficient to go and to present rm.wikipedia.org, they want good case studies and projects generating an impact. Basically we need something to boost the involvement of the local communities giving them some good examples. And this is what we are trying to do. --Ilario (disc.) 20:14, 2 ago 2017 (CEST)

Ilario, I think you did miss that my proposal entails opening separate namespaces within rm.wikipedia.org, not moving Wikisource content into articles. You can see for yourself on https://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text:Houptsyte what that looks like. If you don’t look at the URL, you wouldn’t even notice that you are on the Alemannic Wikipedia site rather than on an Alemannic Wikisource site.

You say that in your opinion, the Romansh Wikipedia community is too weak to support a Wikisource project. But what you are proposing is to try to establish a second Romansh community. What makes you think that when there is a weak Romansh Wikipedia community, a strong Wikisource community will develop somewhere else? A combined Romansh Wikipedia + Wikisource community will be stronger than two separate communities. Call it Romansh Wikimedia Community if that sounds better. Having all the activity in one place will attract new users better than having the activity split up between different sites. For smaller languages with a limited user base, this makes more sense. The situation is different from large languages like Italian or English with millions of speakers and an extremely large body of texts, where having specialized projects is more efficient and user-friendly.

I don’t think that your plan to incubate a Romansh Wikisource community within it.wikisource will work. In the years since this test project was started, there hasn’t even been enough input from Romansh speakers to set up a main page to welcome readers. How much longer is that going to take? Another four years? The problem is that right now, no Romansh speaker will ever find this content here, which makes the work done here largely useless unfortunately. Maybe your partner universities know about and can access this, but normal Romansh speakers can't. It is also questionable whether the average Romansh speaker will feel comfortable navigating a site with the interface all in Italian. I have trouble picturing for example, a Sursilvan high school student, doing that.

Your other valid counterargument is that there will be technical disadvantages. However, I stand by my point that these can be solved if there is a will to help on the part of it.wikisource users and WikimediaCH. If something was set up to work on it.wikisource, then it should also be able to be set up to work on rm.wikipedia. After all, these sites all run on the same software.

By the way, I believe that the Lia Rumantscha has already been active for several years now in the form of different users adding content to rm.wikipedia on a very regular basis. Most of this content was likely added by people connected to the Lia Rumantscha. The same users have been compiling this content into Wikibooks as well (perhaps to use in schools, who knows...). This activity of creating books is another argument for having everything in one place: books can be made from the Wikisource content, or from both Wikipedia and Wikisource content. The book Tge è l'illuminissem? does just that for example.

An actual Romansh Wikisource might also be a good idea, but at this stage it is unlikely that a test project would satisfy the Language Committee’s activity requirements. And even then, final approval and creation usually takes years…Keeping everything under one roof still seems like the best solution to me. --Terfili (disc.) 14:42, 3 ago 2017 (CEST)

Ok, the perspective is a little bit different. The idea is to involve users like universities and researcher in Wikisource, because based on more scientific basis, and to consider the perspective of a bigger family Rumantsch+Ladin for Wikisource. This is not my idea but something that we discovered discussing with the university of Bozen and there is already a group of researchers of Rhaeto-Romansh literature from Switzerland and from Italy where the University of Bozen is a member. The rules of Wikisource are very strict and based on a working process that matches perfectly the expectations of the universities. Wikisource is the perfect project to propose to the departments of philology of the universities. Honestly, before contacting the University of Bozen, I have started previously a contact with the Romansh group of the digitazion of the "Crestomazia Rumantscha" to discover that the project is mostly died. Basically what we are trying to do is to contact researchers and universities to publish their collection of books in Wikisource. Afterwards if Rm.wikipedia.org would have a copy of those books, there is no problem. I said that probably from these projects we can collect more volunteers and this is true, because besides these initiatiaves are starting new ones to create a community of volunteers. The department of schools of Bozen would propose the Wikisource content at the school, and the involvement of Kiwix is due to the problem of the use of wifi at the school which is not allowed. So there may be the opportunity to have activities with schools. And some association of Bozen are wikking to collaborate. But, if the books will be donated by the universities, and these books will be mostly completed and proofread, there will be small space to the contribution of volunteers in Wikisource. I suppose that, probably, the best project to address new volunteers will be Wikipedia. Surely we will ask to write articles connected with the books and with the legends and with the writers in Wikipedia and not in Wikisource. I think that there may be more possibility to involve volunteers if we ask them to write about their culture and their tradition and their history using their own language. During the Celtic Knot I have seen interesting projects to revitalize local communities in celtic languages but all those intiatives based on realistic intiatives. An example has been that of Welsh proposing Wikidata content for articles without content [1] and in my opinion a project collecting content from Wikidata more sense than to integrate Wikisource content, because Wikidata is a project created exactly for this aim. Or this project which has been created integrating content with wikispecies [2]. I have seen in Celtic languages a growing community and an involvment of Universities, administration and Wikipedians. And the success of their work has been based on two main points: having all celtic languages working together without conflicts, and looking at the departments of philology of the universities as main partner. This exactly what we are trying to do. --Ilario (disc.) 22:29, 3 ago 2017 (CEST)

@Terfili, Ilario Just to test a ICBD (It can be done) take a look to this:

It's a screenshot of https://rm.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisader:Alex_brollo/text/Disputatiun; you see it as an empty page, but the simple script that is running into my own rm.pedia common.js uploads it.source page Disputatiun into it, and the same script could "transclude" any other existing it.source page into rm.pedia, after page name prefix "Utilisader:Alex brollo/text/".

There is much to do (html has to be cleaned up deleting a lot of disturbing code and editing links) but now I see that is possible; consider that Disputatiun is a proofread page, i.e. "the hard case". I'll go ahead if any of you is interested into this interesting trip. Alex brollo (disc.) 22:48, 3 ago 2017 (CEST)